Yes, the Raiders are 1-5, coming off of back-to-back losses that would have put any other coach for any other organization on the hot seat. And yes, the Raiders are the laughingstock of the NFL, seemingly getting worse by the week.

And while Gruden has complete control of everything that happens with the Raiders when it comes to football — the way he sees it, this team’s play shouldn’t reflect on him.

In a bizarre and, at times, downright sad press conference Tuesday, Gruden bemoaned the team’s state of injuries, confused criticism for “hatred”, threw a player (or two, or three) under the bus, and declared emphatically that his team is not “tanking anything”.

For 15 minutes, Gruden played more defense than his team has all year.

If you want to glean meaningful insight as to what went wrong for the Raiders in the opening six games of the season or what’s going to change in the final 10 games of the campaign from that press conference, I can assure you that you’re looking in the wrong place.

It was a lot like Gruden’s Monday Night Football broadcasts.

No, Gruden’s presser was a public effort to deflect blame and to convince the world that — despite all the evidence to the contrary — that he’s not the problem, he’s the solution.

It’s a laughable concept — one that’s unbecoming of someone in Gruden’s position. Ultimately, the press conference would have been waste of time, if not for the subtext of it all.

Either Gruden is a coach who has an ulterior motive — he’s making big, bold, and soon-to-be-unveiled changes behind the scenes that he doesn’t want anyone to know about (for whatever reason) — or he’s in completely over his head and is doing a poor job of covering up those insecurities.

(Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

If you want to believe that the former is true — if you want to think (wishfully) that a full-blown youth movement is nigh in Oakland and that Gruden is focusing on 2019 or 2020 — he gave you a bit of fuel Tuesday: he cut 35-year-old linebacker Derrick Johnson and said he wants to get second-year cornerback Gareon Conley back into the fold. Maybe rookie defensive back Nick Nelson will see the field in the weeks to come, too.

“We’re going to continue to try to develop our young players,” Gruden said. “I have been accused all my life of hating rookies and playing veterans. I’m playing 10 rookies right now. What do you say to that, America?”

(We’ll ignore the fact that only local media was in the room — it’s always showtime for Gruden.)

He also made it clear that he had said all he could say about a few things Tuesday. So secretive…

But the latter option — that Gruden is overwhelmed by the task of trying to almost singlehandedly turn around one of professional sports’ worst franchises — seems far more likely given everything he said (and how he said it) Tuesday.

His team’s play certainly backs up that theory, too.

(Wire)

Gruden showed a willingness to throw everyone but himself under the bus on Tuesday. With a team this bad, there is no doubt plenty of blame to go around, but Gruden made sure that all that blame missed him.

In fact, the only thing Gruden would admit culpability for on Tuesday was the poor play of quarterback Derek Carr.

“I said it when I got here. If he doesn’t play well, I’ve failed. This guy’s a good player that can be great,” Gruden said.

But at the same time, the coach was clear that he thinks it’d be unfair to judge the quarterback’s play given the state of his offensive line.

Gruden wants you to forget that he’s in charge of everything in Alameda. He wants you to believe that he’s a victim of circumstance.

Six weeks into the season, it was as if he was openly admitting that he can’t win with this team.

(Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)

Yes, the Raiders are banged up, and no, they didn’t have much of a roster to start the season before injuries kicked in, but Gruden doesn’t have plausible deniability here — he can’t chalk up his team’s incredible failures to bad players and bad luck.

Because the Raiders are unquestionably his team. Gruden is the man in charge of this crappy roster — whether he wants to admit that truth or not.

More than half of the Raiders’ 53-man was brought in by Gruden. He has as much control over the Raiders as any coach has over any team in the NFL — and when you think about Bill Belichick and Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s rocky relationship, Gruden might be the top dog.

Maybe that’s why Gruden wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Reggie McKenzie is still the Raiders’ general manager on Tuesday.

“Reggie and I had a long meeting yesterday. I know that’s a shock to some people that think we don’t have any meetings,” Gruden, who reportedly has assembled his own scouting department — which supersedes McKenzie’s — said.

Gruden should have simply said “blame him”.

(Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)

And let’s not forget that Gruden is also the man in charge of preparing this team to play.

On Sunday — and the Sunday before that — the Raiders “executed” an unimaginative gameplan without an ounce of zeal.

But Gruden was adamant that he liked his team’s effort in their loss to the Seahawks in London.

“I’m very happy with the effort. I have no problems with the effort. Very happy,” he said.

I thought it was a joke — did he put on the wrong tape?

But again, if he admitted he wasn’t happy with that effort, he would be indicting himself. And he couldn’t possibly do that.

Instead, he decided to throw his punter, kicker, and a journeyman cornerback who isn’t happy with his playing time under the bus. (“Rashaan Melvin is on his seventh team, I think. He’s had different techniques. Maybe he’s confused.”)

But in the weeks to come, scapegoats might be harder to find — Gruden is already having to start sacrificing “his guys” (all three players were Gruden acquisitions) to deflect blame.

(Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Amid all of Gruden’s self-preservation and projection Tuesday, he didn’t do a thing to counteract the prevailing belief that there’s no overt plan — no obvious direction — to anything the Raiders are doing. And tt the moment, the one thing Gruden is insistent his team is not doing — tanking — might be the only thing they can actually execute.

There’s no doubt that Gruden inherited a mess in Oakland, but instead of tidying up, he’s made a bigger mess and has now set everything on fire, knowing that — because of Mark Davis’ man crush on him and the ridiculous contract he leveraged from it — he will be the last one standing.

He’s probably right about that, too.

And in the meantime, the Raiders’ problems — which all point back to him and his boss — are everyone’s fault but his.